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Well how did that happen?

It's been a busy few days and I haven't had as much time to my sewing machine as I would like. How disappointing. The good news? I am making enough money at my job to pay for materials I keep picking up to sew when I have time... It's somewhat of a viscous cycle. Another unfortunate side effect is that I don't get the chance sit down and spend some quality with my blog. Too sad.

But I haven't been totally lazy. Sunday was my first good sewing day in a while and I am proud to say that I accomplished a lot! I stitched the binding onto 4 quilts! WOW. It's my least favorite thing about quilting, attaching the binding to the quilt top. I love the hand stitching, I could do that for hours (and I often do) but the prep I could seriously do without.

I know I posted pictures of this before but I am proud of it so I'm posting more. I love the striped shot cotton I used for the binding. When I started the project I had intended to use the stripe for binding, but when it came time to cut it I almost couldn't. It's too cool. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I could of course get more some how, but I felt like a big decision at the time.

This one I actually finished quilting a while ago and it ended up in the closet, or almost finished I should say. I had left the centers of the Dresden blocks unquilted because I couldn't decide how to proceed. I wanted additional support but didn't want to break up the background so that there was a common element between the applique blocks and the hand quilted blocks. I didn't really like how it turned out before adding the binding but I think the addition of the dark pink really helped pull it together.

Here's detail of the new quilting. It's simple and a little messy but I like it. It gives support without muddying the background. I haven't been able to get any good pictures of the last two I finished binding so I may post on those tomorrow.

On top of finishing all that binding on Sunday, I was also able to work on quilting my challenge quilt to the North Star Quilt Guild Show in October. I don't believe I've posted about it before... To be honest I wasn't sure if I was supposed to. I thought it was supposed to be secret... Not sure where I got that impression because it's definitely not the case. Anyways, that's were the title of this evenings post comes from. I kind of made a silly mistake... and sewed some of my extra backing into the back of the quilt. Now lets see if you can guess where!

Can you find it? I hope not.... haha. I tried to trim away the extra fabric instead of tearing out all my stitches so I hope it's not that noticeable. I'd say this is my most complicated project so far. It's about 35"x35" and it has taken me probably 15 hours to quilt so far maybe more. And I'm maybe half way done? I'm having way to much fun with this project.

Here's a teaser of the front. I don't really want to post too many pictures until its done just in case, but I think it's looking pretty good so far :) The colors are pretty saturated in the picture too so keep an open mind. More to come later.

In other news I've been doing more and more research into starting my longarm quilting business and I keep getting more and more excited. I wish I could just up and buy one and start learning but I realize that it is probably still going to be a while. A girl can dream!

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Alright! So last time we ended with a fully designed pattern, complete with 1/4 inch seam allowance. From here I suggested either scanning and printing another copy of your pattern or tracing the individual parts onto a different piece of…

It's a beautiful Sunday and I am ready to start sewing... but first there are a few things I need to take care of... Just in case you missed part one here it is!
Part Two: The Prep
Materials:
-Design you created last time
-Fabric for your background and applique
-Masking Tape
-Pen to mark fabric
(I used both water soluble and permanent fine tipped pens. Fabric pencils would also work. Just test your pen or pencil beforehand to make sure you can see your lines before you start tracing)
-Needle
-Thread
-Safety Pins (optional)

Step One:

Press your fabric and cut to a square a bit larger than your design. It is better to have too much border than not enough. I folded one corner of my fat quarter up diagonally to find the new edge of my square. Because I didn't need this first square to be even I just estimated and cut with scissors.

Step Two:

Mark the very center of the square and the edge of the diagonal bisecting lines with an erasable pen or pencil.

Ever since I first started quilting I have always loved the look of the New York Beauty block but have been a little intimidated by the combination of paper piecing and curved piecing. Well I'm glad to say that I finally built up the courage and took the plunge. Or started to. I got about halfway to the edge of the diving board before I realized I didn't quite know where to start.

This project being somewhat impromptu, I didn't have a pattern to work from but since I had such an amazing resource at my fingertips I didn't worry. I decided to scour the internet to look for free tutorials or templates I could print off on my own. I eventually started to get frustrated when all the links to templates I found were broken. After about an hour I realized that it probably would have taken less time to design my own than it had to look through all of those broken links.
So here goes: How to design your very own New York Beauty Templates/Paper Piecing Pattern